Major League Baseball?s MLB.com At Bat 12 application is delivering an average of more than 800,000 live streams per day, approximately double of last year?s daily average.

MLB Advanced Media, the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball points to this milestone as well as others as evidence that mobile consumption of live baseball games is reaching record levels. For example, this year the At Bat app surpassed three million downloads just eight days into the regular season while it took 145 days for the app to reach the same level last year.

?We think At Bat simply is better in 2012, redesigned UI and improved performance ? our developers worked over 500,000 lines of code on At Bat in the off-season to do so,? said Matthew Gould, a spokesman for MLB Advanced Media, New York.

?Also, we think universal app and in-app subscription introductions for At Bat were not only the right thing to do for fans, but also have driven trials which have driven word-of-mouth discoveries,? he said.

Connecting with fans
Still more stats support how baseball fans are embracing mobile with the At Bat app holding the spot for the highest grossing sports app for iPhone, iPad and Android on numerous occasions over the past few months.

The latest edition of the At Bat app was introduced in February.

The At Bat 12 app is available for free on supported iOS and Android devices for MLB.TV Premium subscribers. Fans can also subscribe to the app for the season for $14.99. IPhone and iPad users also have the option of paying $2.99 per month.

One reason for the success of MLB?s mobile apps is that league does a good job of connecting with fans via streaming video and audio.

?Mobile gives fans an opportunity to connect in a much deeper way than they can through print and other traditional forms or media,? said Kevin McGuire, vice president of product at Motricity, Bellevue, WA. ?Multimedia on smartphones and tablets is unique to the mobile channel and what sets it apart.

?MLB does a great job of going all in on streaming video,? he said.

Mr. McGuire is not affiliated with the MLB and spoke based on his experience in mobile.

Game-day experiences
MLB continues to build its mobile application strategy as well.

Its two newest apps are MLB.com At the Ballpark and MLB.com Full Court. The former is an in-ballpark app that enables fans to check-in to get exclusive offers and mobile food ordering in select ballparks.

MLB.com Full Court is an app for the iPhone and iPad that delivers live MLB video streaming content channels.

Another of the league?s apps is MLB.com Beat the Streak presented by Scotts, which allows fantasy baseball players to manage their daily picks on-the-go.

Each of the four apps is ranked among the top 10 for iPhone.

?Something we see across industries, is the increase focus on mobile,? Mr. McGuire said. ?This is especially true in sports and with MLB - they?ve done such as fabulous jobs over the past few years of honing their mobile strategy.

?They get the fact that they can use smart device experiences across Android, iPhone, Kindle Fire, Windows Phone 7 and other platforms to really drive the in-game game-day experience and really bring people that are at the stadium a more in-depth experience or who are away from the stadium and want to know what is going on,? he said.